


Alternatively

by Nope



Category: Super Sons (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:48:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28299951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: Lost in time and space, Jon and Damian work to get home.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Alternatively

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KitKaos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitKaos/gifts).



"Well, gee, golly gosh, strange unknown alien technology appearing out of nowhere!" Damian gasped, clutching his gauntlets to his heart, white lenses wide. "It's so shiny! I must touch it! Wow-wee!"

"I don't sound anything like that," Jon complained. "You were the one who was all, like--" He dropped into a vaguely accented growl. "Initial bat-analysis is in-bat-conclusive, we must take it to the bat-cave to use the billion dollar bat-computers, we have six, they have bats on the front." In his normal voice he added, "That's you, that is. That's what you sound like."

Damian tutted, going back to his work, microtools dancing across gold circuitry. "I didn't tell you to pick it up with your bare hands, cornpoke."

"You know that's not a word, right?" Jon tried peering over Damian's shoulder, even floating up a bit when Damian immediately hunched over it. "Is it fixed yet?"

A growl escaped from somewhere under the hood. "Are we home right now?"

Jon looked up from Damian's workbench, which was a crate, across their pop-up storefront, which was also a crate, and out into what should have been Centennial Park, complete with a big gold statue of his dad, and saw instead a paved square in the middle of a business district, full of people in brightly coloured costumes walking fast with their heads down, talking business on their business phones. "No?"

"Then no. It is not fixed." Without looking up, Damian reached out and tugged Jon back to Earth. "You have a customer."

A tall, blue skinned woman in a formal business cape and expensive looking monochrome bodysuit stalked up to the table and snapped out "Triple double iced espresso," before Jon had managed to get out the first half of his attempted greeting. "I was told you would be--" Her shockingly white hair whipped back from her long neck in the sudden gust of wind, and she blinked owlishly at the cup being thrust at her, ice crystals sparkling along the rim. "--fast."

"Fastest coffee in town, ma'am," Jon said, setting his fists on his hips and puffing his chest out. "That will be--" But she was already stalking away, coins blinking into existence over the crate as she clicked her fingers. Jon deflated, catching them out of the air and adding them to their cache.

"How much was that wire you wanted to buy?" he asked Damian.

"I wanted to take it," Damian corrected. "You insisted we buy it."

"Stealing is wrong," Jon said adamantly. Damian just tutted. Jon huffed, dropping to sit cross-legged on the ground, leaning his elbows on the crate and staring forlornly around the park. "Can we at least jump timestreams again? This alternate reality is sooooo boring. Everybody has powers but nobody does anything."

"The overwhelming mundanity makes it perfect cover while I fix the device. We have no idea where continuing to randomly rotate through space and time might take us next. There could be worlds that are ruled by Darkseid. Worlds that have succumbed to environmental disaster. Worlds in which humans never evolved and there are only oceans upon oceans or shrimp. Or," Damian added, visibly shuddering, "more singing."

"I liked that one!" Jon sat up straight to sing, " _Criminals beware, I'll give you a fright. Fighting for justice, yeah, I am the niiiight!_ You dance really well."

"I was trained from birth in the assassin's arts by the League of Shadows; I dance exceptionally well." Damian pointed with his microwelder. "New customer."

A large, bald but wildly bearded white man wearing a deep purple toga over a white tunic was coming down the path, his sandalled feet not quite touching the ground and sending up tiny thunderclaps with each step.

" _Now the time is here, for Superboy to spread cheer!_ " Jon bounced to his feet. "What can we get you today, sir?"

"The biggest, blackest, hottest coffee you can manage. Starbucks refused to serve me a trenta espresso," the man complained, his beard frizzy with rising static, a deep smell of ozone filling the air around them. "They said it wasn't a real drink. Can't put thirty one ounces of espresso in a single cup? Rubbish! In my day we-- By Io, did you see that red flash?"

"No," Jon said, holding out a giant mug out of which steam was blasting like a locomotive. "That will be five dollars, sir!"

"Oh. Well. That-- That was quick." He accepted the mug, gave Jon a note in return and then sipped appreciatively while giving the pair of them a look over. "Say, aren't you guys a little young to be baristas?"

"Yes," Damian said coldly, his lenses narrowed to dangerous slits. "Yes, we are."

"Well." The man chuckled awkwardly, tugging at his collar as he backed away. "Okay then." Trailing little nervous crackles of lightning, he scurried off.

"This is why we never get any tips," John sighed.

"You're not being forceful enough. Business is about expanding the take-up of ancillary services to the main product in order to more deeply entrench customers in your market ecosystem," Damian said, pulling a pulsing gear from the central disc and smacking it with a hammer when it promptly started growing micro tendrils. "Your customers may think they only want an Americano, but secretly they yearn for a caramel macchiato, or they will do once you get done selling it to them one small extra at a time."

"That kind of sounds like lying," Jon said dubiously. "Are the pieces supposed to grow like that? Is the technology alive?"

"In reverse order: no, yes, and it's not lying, it's marketing. How do you think Wayne Enterprises continues to hold position in the Fortune 100 Top 10 every year? Marketing strategies. Brand synergy."

"Is this why you guys put bats on literally everything? You have a bat on your cow, D. On your bat-cow."

Damian jabbed a tiny screwdriver angrily in Jon's direction. "Do not question Bat-Cow!"

"I'm not!" Jon lifted his hands in surrender. "Cows are cool! I'm just asking!"

With one more warning jab, Damian tutted and turned back to his work. "Upsell the next pedestrian."

Jon considered the closest, who was slowly bobbing past in a lime green nun's habit and trailing rainbow haze. "...yeah, no, I'm gonna go try crushing coal into diamond again."

He dug the black rock out of his pocket, and squeezed it between his hands, carefully aiming his heat vision to hit the coal and not his own fingers. Damian had explained it would require a sustained seven hundred and twenty five thousand pounds per square inch and a temperature of two thousand Fahrenheit to begin the crystallization process. He'd also gone off on a long lecture about natural diamonds predating coal and about primordial carbon that Jon had mostly ignored. If scientists could make diamonds in a lab, he should be able to make one by squeezing coal, gosh darn it.

Another couple of potential customers walked by, but they were quickly put off by Damian hissing "upsell" at him. Possibly also by the smell of hot rock or Jon's coal dust covered hands. Or the weird sparks coming off the alien space time rotating gizmo thing. Jon focused his super-vision on it, seeing through the multiple layers of gold circuitry to the pink-purple energy within.

"It sort of reminds me of the technology in Kathy's spaceship back in Hamilton. Remember Boyzarro?" Damian's shoulders almost twitched in a way Jon knew was an agreement. "Can you make it call Kathy so she can come get us?"

"Dimensional channel surfing and hypertime rotation may bear some superficial similarities, but they are fundamentally different technologies. This appears to be something more akin to a Mother Box, although a very primitive one--"

"There's no power to that bit," Jon interrupted, pointing. "I can see it with my super-vision. There's a kink in the connection."

"Do you want to fix this?"

"Ooh, can I?"

"No."

Jon almost pouted at him, but since Damian had started to fix the part he'd indicated, Jon decided to take it as a win. He went back to his coal, but that quickly got boring, and there were no customers, upsell or not, so he tried, "Didn't you like any of the worlds we passed through?"

"What's there to like?"

"I liked the one with the living plants?"

"Too Poison Ivy."

"What about the dancing pengui-- No, okay, I heard why that was wrong while I was saying it." Jon frowned, trying to remember what order things had happened in. "What came after penguins?"

There was a slight pause and then, with as much angry disgust as Jon had ever heard a person put in their voice, Damian said, "Clownworld."

Jon shuddered in sympathy. The feet. The feet had been so big. And the noses--!

"What about that one where everyone was a spy?" he asked instead.

Damian scoffed. "If I wanted to spend all night checking if my colleagues were trying to stab me in the back, I would stay with Mother and Grandfather."

"But intrigue! Mystery! Disguises and stalking people and complicated heists and sudden moments of hyperviolence. It's like your usual evening but all the time," Jon mused cheerfully, ignoring what suspiciously sounded like a growl escaping Damian's hood. "And what about all the cool gadgets they had?"

"Boring, pointless, or poor quality versions of tools I am already carrying."

"I liked the watches, with the flip up faces and the secret radio!"

"Our communicators are vastly better. And your phone can do videos. Why would you want a flip up watch?"

"Uh. Because they're sweet?" Damian lifted his head to mouth 'sweet' at Jon in a disparaging way. Jon pointedly ignored this with a huff, crossing his arms across his chest, accidentally smudging coal dust on his S. "But, no. You had to come here. Where literally everyone has beyond basic human powers. We've seen flight, fire, physics, magicians, that guy who was a computer, the ice lady, that guy who could talk to moose, the tiny shouty inventor lady who hated our capes that you wanted to steal the wire from. And what do they do with it? Nothing! All those superpowers and there's still poverty and sickness and homelessness and they don't do anything!"

"Helping those who offer you nothing in return is the only true superpower. Everything else is just gravy." Damian frowned at the lack of response, and looked up from his work, narrowing his lenses at Jon. "Why are you making that... face?"

Jon beamed wider. "It's a smile!"

"Stop it."

"You sounded like me!"

"You're mistaken," Damian huffed. "I have fixed the device."

"I thought you needed wire!" Jon bounced to his feet, shoving his hot coal back in his pocket.

"Our total coffee profit is eight dollars. I worked around the issue," Damian said smugly. He twisted the central dial. For a moment there was a sound like an old rotary phone dialling and then pinkish purpley light washed over them. "Three... Two... One..."

With a muffled whoompf, they reappeared in a park somewhat similar to where they had just been. The first thing Jon noticed was the lack of a coffee crate. The second thing he noticed was a giant gold statue of his dad. 

"We're in Centennial Park!" he said excitedly, still turning.

The third thing he noticed was a giant gold statue of his mom. And of himself. And of Batman. And of the first Robin. And the second Robin. And the third. The fourth. Wonder Woman. John Stewart and the other Lanterns. All the Titans. The Outsiders. The Birds of Prey. The Doom Patrol. Even the Suicide Squad had statues.

"Hn," Damian said.

Jon glanced at him then back at the statues. Which were all looking at him. Had they all been looking at him before? "D, I don't think this is our Earth."

Damian tutted, fiddling with the dial. It let out a sudden spark that made Jon blink reflexively, more out of surprise than actual brightness, and when he looked again, half the statues had gone from standing on their plinths to stepping off them. 

"Did you see that? D?" Each statue Jon examined closely appeared even to his super-vision to be perfectly normal gold statues, but every time he focused on one, when he looked around another had edged slightly closer. Jon started spinning on the spot at superspeed, trying to watch all of them in turn but fraction by fraction one after another crept towards them. "Damian. Robin!"

"Got it," Damian said and, just as immobile gold fingers still somehow brushed the edge of his cape, twisted the dial again. "A minor power flow issue. There, you see? Only one statue."

Jon eyed it, closing one eye at a time. Damian stared at him like he'd grown another head. "Just checking. Are you sure this is the right Earth?"

Damian sighed and looked around for the nearest civilian, finding an old woman feeding the pigeons and promptly stalking in her direction. "Ma'am, can you tell me who the greatest hero on the planet is?"

"Hawkman," said one of the pigeons between pecks at the seed.

The old woman opened her mouth wide and shrieked. As her shriek got louder, her mouth got wider and something dark and with way too many eyes uncurled in the depths of her maw and Damian said, "Hn," again and twisted the dial even as Jon grabbed him.

Pink. Purple. Red and orange.

"Why is everything on fire?!" Jon yelled over the roar of flames, ignoring Damian's squirming in favour of flying them both up into the air. "I don't think our Earth would be on fire."

Pink. Purple. Snow. Pink Purple. Hurricane. Pink. Purple. Warm yellow. They both looked up at the picture perfect clear sky, then down at the city, and then immediately closed their eyes. That was way too much flesh and definitely not enough clothes.

"...at least the sunlight is nice?" Jon offered.

Damian somehow flipped around from Jon's arms to sit on his back. "A slight power flow issue. I'm sure I can fix it. Just fly straight."

"That's kind of hard to do with my eyes closed."

"Then open them."

Jon tried. He immediately closed them again. "Nope. Too young for this. Dial again."

He could see the pink purple burst through his eyelids, risked opening them and found himself face to face with a flying dinosaur. "Pterodactyl?"

"Pteranodon," Damian corrected. "They eat fish. It shouldn't attack--"

It attacked. Jon took a deep breath and blew it out as hard as he could, blasting it away. "I've done dinosaur island before. New dial!"

Damian seemed about to argue, but the flying lizard was already winging its way back, now with friends, so he turned the dial again.

"Darkseid IS!" Granny Goodness screamed right in their faces. 

Jon punched her entirely on instinct even as Damian spun the dial again. "Oh, no! Oh no!"

"What?" Damian asked, looking around. "It seems safe so far. Are you seeing something with your super-vision?"

"I hit an old woman! In the face! With my fist!"

Damian scoffed. "It was just Granny Goodness."

Jon gasped in horror. "I hit a granny?!"

"An evil New God granny. I think I stabbed her at one point. My memories of Apokalips are a little blurred," he admitted.

Jon was so startled at an admission of something even that vaguely approaching a weakness, it temporarily threw him out of his funk, and he finally took a proper look around him. "This is still Centennial Park, but there's no statue of dad, so we're not home."

"Find somewhere to land," Damian ordered. "I just need a moment to find where the short is."

Jon landed where the square had been on their Earth. It was dark, squidgy soil here. Jon sank in it as he landed and promptly floated back up a couple of inches, pulling a face. Damian flipped neatly off him to land on it without fuss.

"This should be," he started and then large, chalky white hands burst up through the soil and closed on his legs. The dial went flying from his hands and Damian said something that would get Jon grounded for weeks. "Jon!"

Even at superspeed, Jon barely caught the dial before it hit the ground and he turned back in time to see Damian get yanked underground. Jon tried to shove the dial in his pockets, realised it wouldn't fit with the coal, and tucked it under his belt instead. Backing up a few dozen feet, he spun and dove towards the Earth, fists out in front of him. Earth exploded with the force of his impact, bursting apart. He crashed through into some kind of burrow, yelling, "Robin!"

The darkness was briefly illuminated by explosions as Damian twisted through the air between mountainous men, each the color of death and wearing a funeral suit. Even as the light of the first blasts faded, more explosive batarangs came whistling out. "Superboy! It's Grundy! They're all Grundy!"

"Born on a Monday," one growled, almost as if in agreement.

Jon changed direction in mid-air and struck the one that spoke in the chest, knocking him back. "Robin! I've got the dial! Come here!"

Damian, attempting to do just that, grunted in response, kicking off one lumbering attacker and flipping over the next. He and Jon were both faster than the Grundys, but there was little room to manoeuvre and they were vastly outnumbered. Jon struggled free of his current attacker and turned his heat vision up to the max he could risk without also cooking Damian. The smell of burnt Grundy was terrible, but not as terrible as the sight of the same monster pushing himself back up immediately, bubbling skin already healing.

"We need to get out of here," Jon said, trying not to hear the panic in his own voice. He felt heat begin to crackle under his skin and pushed it down but he could still see light beginning to flicker under his skin. He tried to make himself breathe steadily but while he was concentrating on that, Grundy sideswiped him, sending him crashing into the wall of the burrow. He dug himself out of the mud, punched the nearest large shadow as hard as he could, and looked around frantically for Damian. "Robin! D!!"

"Don't solar blast!" Damian yelled from somewhere on the other side of all the Grundys. "You're carrying the dial! You'll break--"

Damian cried out in pain. Jon yelled his name with no answer, only all the Grundys turning towards him, their pallid faces given a horrible new life by the light Jon was beginning to emit. He dove at them, punching and kicking, trying to get past them, seeing a flash of cloak and burrowing towards it, trying to reach it, trying to reach the dial at his belt, trying to keep the flare down, keep the Grundys back but it was all too late, all too much. Damian slipped through his fingers and his control quickly followed.

Golden light blasted everything away.

Pinks came back first. Then purples. Then a faint ruffling sound, like a hundred, thousand, million comic pages being flipped in endless secession. Jon blinked, trying to focus, but the images were passing by so fast that even with his superspeed, he could barely catch glimpses. His father, holding his cousin Kara. Deathstroke, fighting the Flash. The Joker, grinning from behind a mask made of his own severed face. A group of teens in colorful costumes in a glass sphere. Every color of Lantern allied against a great shadow. His mother, falling from a building. He tried to fly towards that one but it was long gone before he even started to move. 

Jon tried to yell, but he couldn't hear himself.

Suddenly remembering the transport device, he reached for his belt, but it wasn't there. His belt wasn't all there either. It must have been torn by a Grundy, or blasted apart by his own powers. What if the device was destroyed? What if Damian was left behind, trapped? What if he was d--

A grey-gloved hand closed around his wrist and yanked him sideways through the blur of images.

Jon found himself rolling across cold pavement in a city so dark and foreboding it could only be Gotham. The sounds of the city rolled over him and it took him a second to focus his super-hearing away from distant traffic and conversations, away from the rabid beating of his own heart, to closer, almost as familiar a beat. He looked up and gave a great cry of joy, flying across the space between them in a second. "Damian! You're here."

Damian, looking as perfectly unruffled as ever, tutted. "Of course I'm here, dummy."

"Wait, where exactly is here?" Jon asked, looking up. "This looks familiar. Are we back on Spy World?" He looked back down, taking in Damian's uniform again. "Wait, wait, your gauntlets are green. You didn't grab me from the timestream. Who grabbed me?"

Damian looked past him. Jon turned, seeing a dark looming caped figure. "Batman?!"

"No," the man said.

Jon looked further, noticed the bat on the man's chest was red, the cape was actually a jacket with tails and a red interior, and that the cowl lacked pointy ears. He quickly took an unconscious step behind Damian. "You!"

"Oh. It's Batdrake," Damian scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest and looking away. "Boring."

"I go by Savior now," said the alternate future Tim Drake. Damian made a strangled noise and Jon realised the other boy was only barely not laughing. Savior just sighed. "I've been tracking your disruption to hypertime -- both of you. Once I located Damian on this alternate, I pulled Superboy out of the timestream to--"

"Are you trying to kill me again?" Jon interrupted. Savior and Damian both stared at him. Jon huffed. "I think that's a perfectly reasonable question!"

"Why would I pull you out of timestream just to--"

"Do you still have the transport dial?" Damian interrupted.

"I think I lost it in the Grundy nest," John said sadly. "I think I exploded it like you said might happen. Blew myself right into hypertime. Do you think you can build one from scratch?"

"Actually," Savior tried, "I--"

"We'll have to go to Apokolips," Damian decided. "We'll need Metron's Mobius Chair. I have a plan."

"I can send you home," Savior said.

"We'll need a boom tube to get there." Jon considered. "Maybe this earth has a Justice League. Of spies!"

"I can send you home!" Savior yelled, waving what appeared to be a TV remote at them.

"Oh." Jon stared at him, not really sure how to take this, and then decided it was bad to look a gift teleport in the former possible super-villain. "That would be great, thank you."

"Don't thank me. Restoring you to your proper place in the timestream will prevent any further hypertime contamination."

"I would have fixed the device," Damian said with certainty. "We didn't need your Drake-ex-machina."

Savior just pointed the remote at the nearest wall and pressed a button. A small pink pinprick of light expanded and darkened into a swirling purple portal that became a shimmering ring around a view of the Fortress of Solitude and a sedately bobbing kryptonian AI.

"Subject Jonathan Kent identified," Kelex said. "Quantum signature match confirmed. Welcome home."

"Thanks, Kelex! Come on, D," Jon said, happily floating through the portal. He looked back as Damian followed him through. "Uh. Thanks, Savior. Mister Drake. For. Yeah."

It wasn't a very good thank you. His parents would probably have had words if they'd heard it, but Jon still wasn't over that whole trying to kill him in case he blew up the future thing and, anyway, it was better than nothing. Savior seemed to find it just as awkward because all he did in response was nod very slightly and raise the remote again.

"Drake." Damian, through the portal, had also turned back. "We have some history, you and I. Before I leave, I have some things I want to say."

Savior gave him a suspicious look but his hand paused above the button. 

Damian started counting on his fingers. "One: your choice of codename is stupid. Two: the popped collar on your coat is stupid. Three: your guns are stupid. Four: your disregard of J--"

The portal winked closed, leaving them staring at the wall of the fortress. Damian tutted.

"He could at least have sent us back to Metropolis or Gotham," he complained as he walked off towards the main area. "Now we've got to get all the way back from the Bermuda Triangle."

"I can fly you," Jon said, absently floating along behind him as they passed glass tube after glass tube, each containing a piece of Superman's history.

Damian gave him a questioning look. "You seem subdued. We're back home. It's unfortunate the transport dial was destroyed before I could complete my study of it, but better gone than in more dangerous hands."

"I know," said Jon reluctantly. "It's just... We went through all those worlds, and we don't have anything to show for it. My dads got all these cool souvenirs and we don't. We don't have the dial thing. We don't even have the money we made from the coffee stand. We don't--"

He bumped into Damian who had stopped walking and floated back a few steps, blinking at the hand being thrust in his face.

"Souvenir," said Damian, opening his fist to reveal a pair of genuine Spy World two-way flip-up-face radio watches.

"Oh my gosh!" Jon grabbed them, putting his own on and putting the other on Damian at superspeed so Damian couldn't stop him. "This is the best!" Damian tutted and started walking away and Jon flew after him. "I'm going to hug you now."

"What? No!"

"Yes!" Jon pounced.

"No! Get off me, you great galoot!" Damian ninja'd his way under Jon's grip and fired off his grappling hook, swinging up into the crystal rafters. "Keep your damn alien paws to yourself!"

Laughing loudly, Drake all but forgotten, Jon happily zoomed after him.


End file.
